


Morning tea

by MadOwlintheMostAmazingTree



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:00:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23559505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadOwlintheMostAmazingTree/pseuds/MadOwlintheMostAmazingTree
Summary: I went into the kitchen in the moring but forgot what's my next move. I didn't get my breakfast, but instead, I got a story and an imgainary friend.





	Morning tea

“It’s not your fault.”

What?

“I said, it’s not your fault that you forgot what you are going to do next.”

I had just walked into the kitchen and opened the cupboard. But as I raised a hand to reach, I forgot what I was reaching for. I silently shook head at myself, and thought I was aging and slacking further by the days.

Now, I look around to see who’s speaking to me. There’s no one. Granted, the words I heard didn’t feel like they took the path from my ear into my brain. It’s more like the feeling of the voice I used when I read or the sound I hear when daydreaming. It just appeared inside my head.

“Yes. That is a good simile.”

I start to choose carefully what I’m going to think next. Obviously, the voice is answering to my thought. Deciding on what to think next – that is a mission that sounds like an infinite loop,

“Hey! Don’t wander off. What is the question you are asking?”

I think with proper doubt in my tone: who are you?

“I am the Doctor.”

What doctor? I frown with imaginary brows.

“Doctor of brain issue, at this moment. But I can fix a lot of stuff, I like fixing stuff, I’m very good at fixing stuff. So I said, why defining yourself inside one category, or under one name? Just put your hobby description on your profile. So that’s me. The doctor of everything.”

Whatever. What are you doing in my head?

“Pay attention, custard brain. I said I fix things.”

Fix what? Nothing is wrong with me – except the aging thing which nobody can do anything unless you can reverse time –

“You are still not paying attention! I said, brain issue this time.”

Well aging is sort of brain issue, although it’s also the whole body… but I am hearing voice inside my head so maybe the brain is more of a problem than I thought –

“No. I said, it is not your fault. Your brain is not the faulty thing here – the fault – the fault is in the air.”

What’s wrong with the air?

“What’s wrong indeed. It is so subtle that you never feel the definite point of changing. You get used to it, like a half made pot of custard. Warm milk goes into the egg of your brain, you sit on a low heat and being stirred, so you won’t become scrambled egg but you are slowly curding – no longer an egg, without you feeling the change of state.”

Thank you, I don’t see the merit of being an egg anyway.

“It’s a metaphor! The point is – the point, here, is - ”

Uh-huh, now see who is the one wandering off so he has lost his point.

“The point is! You became the custard brain without knowing it. While you could have been an egg, able to be born into anything.”

Why do I have to be an egg. My brain frowns as hard as it can.

“I like custard. And eggs. And now, I am here to give the brain – the brain as it should have been, although not as good as mine but maybe if I do this right this talk could have been easier, oh dear that would be so much better – back to you.”

So my brain is still malfunctioning. It is faulty.

“Objectively, there is an issue. But it is not stemmed from you. In fact, it is not only you who are experiencing this fault - the entire humanity is under interference so all the human brains are not achieving the full potential to do the normal thinking as it should have been doing. ”

“You just experienced a sudden forgetting, when you heard my voice.”

“What I’m saying is, this sudden forgetting has an external cause. Somebody did this to you. Somebody is altering the thinking in your brain.”

Are you talking about the brainwash, mind-control conspiracy? Come on, at least make up something more original.

“Have you never considered that conspiracy has its root in some facts? Not literally the same as the originating facts, but some leaked bits of facts stimulates the imagination to create some – let’s say, more exciting stories.”

“It started with a good intention though. Lots of bad things happen in that way.”

“Your scientists experimented on a system that can detect the distorted thoughts in their therapy patients – their patients had some unreal thoughts that exaggerate the reality in bad directions. And what the system did was not unsimilar to the cognitive behaviour therapy that is used in normal therapy session, just more automatic. It detected the existence of distorted thoughts, then try to magnify the signals in patients’ brains of the facts they know, so that the facts can overcome the unreal thoughts and bring the patients back to the real world, improve their emotional status. It’s like a free 24/7 therapy consultant.”

“But this kind of intrusive detection didn’t get the consent of the mass patient group. It stopped at the prototype stage, stored away in the laboratory.”

“Then the old routine happened. Commercial companies heard about the experiment, got hold of the technique and reproduced the system. They changed the input and output to your buying impulse and their merchandise recommendation – the same way the web pages showing you ads according to your browser history.”

“Then the textbook next step – the authority found out about the companies’ misbehaviour, enforced them to close but kept the technique – to serve their own purpose.”

“To censor your thinking.”

“This method of censorship has more advantages than deleting what’s out there on the media – it stops the rogue idea from being born. It will never exist, and never have the chance to infect the next person.”

“When it detects your thought goes into a controlled topic, the transmitter near you generates some white noise signals to flood you brain, and mask the signal passing your thinking to the next neuron.”

“It’s similar to when you’re lying in bed and making up for yourself a bedtime story – the more you fantasise on the story, the harder you fall into sleep. But when you are listening to something else, the input from outside occupies your thinking capacity so you discontinue your own thinking, and your original story is gone.”

“So, white noises are put into the wireless signal to disrupt the train of thought in brains. The white noise doesn’t need to contain any meaningful information, just overcome your own thinking with the huge amount of meaningless data, and it effectively stops the creation of original thoughts. It’s the resource exhaustion attack on human brains.”

“The side effect is the white noises cannot be accurately directed at the control target. Everybody in the vicinity will lose their thread of thinking. There comes the other benefit of white noises – it is harder to detect. Meaningful information makes you wonder how you know this information. Meaningless disruption, however, makes you blame your loss of thinking thread on the bad sleep last night or your aging process.”

“Like what you just did.”

Okay, that is a reasonable, self-contained story. But why should I believe the story you’re telling is true?

“You don’t have to. But if you want evidence, some proof – think about how that information comes into your head. Have you seen it somewhere else before – okay I hear you say you have – then think about how I can hear your thinking and answer – alright it is possible that I am just an imaginary voice and you are actually talking to yourself telling a story, but – ah you are fast in countering for a custard brain – there is no need of such language!”

Meh.

If you want to prove it’s real, you will have to show yourself in front of my own eyes.

“I can’t do that now! You know I am disintegrating a whole mind control system, bits and pieces all over this blue round planet, I am busy like the Santa Claus!”

If you are so busy, why are you still talking to me? Why telling my all those fantasies?

“I like an audience. I like thinking out loud while doing my job, and I have got the feeling that if I keep nagging on to my TARDIS she will get so annoyed that she'll just dump me out for some peace - Oh the TARDIS, that’s my space-time machine – of course it’s real, how else am I supposed to fix things all over time and space…”

So you just randomly picked a channel and went in there. Like I am a television programme you can switch off, just it is the other way round. I am as good as a wall. Or as you like it, a bowl of custard. An egg. That's why you call me that, right. 

The voice stopped for a minute.

“There is a little more to that.”

“Because, I wanted to say to you, ‘it is not your fault’.”

“You were sad and blaming yourself. I don’t want to see anyone sad five minutes after they wake up. And I don’t want to see people blaming themselves and feeling sad for something that is not their fault…”

Oh you’re helping, aren’t you?

You think you just pop up randomly at one moment of my sadness, and I’ll be fixed and happy from now on?

When you finish, you will switch off this channel, then what? You think you have done a good thing, you rid a human of her sadness! Then you walk away, believing you saved me and I am saved for good. Like you see the wall you’re talking to has a crack, then you paint it and it is fixed. Yeah, right, thanks, I am going to have an amazing day and here is why, because of the fantastic Doctor mysterio of everything!

The voice doesn’t come back. Probably the work is done, and the channel is disconnected. I was shouting at the void. In my head.

All right, I think. That is a bit too much. He doesn't even know me, I’m not his responsibility, he wants to help, he doesn’t deserve a shout-at. I am sorry. I could have behaved better -

“It’s okay.”

Hm?

“It is true I can only do so much. Random, and limited. There are so many moments, so many occasions, which cannot be reached even with a space-time machine. There are so many rules that I cannot break.”

“I’m sorry that you feel used.”

“But, perhaps, I hope - ”

“Maybe you would like to believe a little, that there is somebody watching over you, wanting to help?”

“If you wish hard enough, I can hear it, and I will come.”

“Like an imaginary friend! I am good at being an imaginary friend.”

“When you are in need, think about today. Try to believe that in this universe, there is a call that will be answered when you’re wishing upon a star…”

But I can only see you when I’m in need? That sounds lonely, for both you and me. It’s not fair.

“Occupational hazard.”

“But if you like – you can tell me other things. Go out in the night and pick a star. Tell it about your day. Good days, bad days, whatever you want. When I travel to that star, when I land at the right moment, I will hear it. After all, I have a space-time machine.”

“Ah, my work is finished here.”

Oh. You’re leaving?

“That’s correct. Remember me. I am real. A real, imaginary friend. How cool is that, eh?”

Meh.

“Bye then.”

Bye.

That night I go out, pick a star (thank god it is a clear night). Then I say,

“Today is an okay day.”

Next morning I go into the kitchen to make breakfast.

I open my biscuit jar. It is stuffed full of custard creams.

I open the cupboard and reach for my Earl Grey. And I make myself a tea.

**Author's Note:**

> It is a product of failing to falling asleep for 3 hours lying in bed because I'm making up my bedtime stories.


End file.
